Could it be Corky time?

He’s perched on a stool in a diner near City Hall, leaned over a paper cup of steaming coffee, braced on scar-tissue elbows and those trademark tan work-boots.

Across the Formica-topped table, a lanky 76-year-old named Dennis Dalton talks in a slow drawl, probing Booze about his aims.

Corky Booze chats up a possible voter in the parking lot of a local strip mall. (Photo by Robert Rogers/Richmond Confidential)

“I always hear your name, every election, and you don’t win,” Dalton said, wagging a finger. “So why do you do this?”

Booze jumped the question quicker than a hiccup.

“I only lost by 450 votes in that last election,” Booze said. “And I was outspent by a landslide. I have been the go-to guy in this town a long time; now, now is the time.”

Booze, 66, burned more than two hours this mid-September morning at Casper’s Famous Hot Dogs, a little haunt he calls his “office.” Dalton eventually pledged his vote, as did a man and woman Booze later wooed for nearly an hour in the parking lot.